


escape

by fardareismai



Series: Imagine Claire and Jamie (Prompts from the blog that I have fulfilled) [12]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Gen, voyager canon divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-04-28 09:03:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5085937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hi! me again with a canon divergence/AU prompt! Imagine... Jamie finds Claire when he escapes from Ardsmuir prison. (I can't remember if the episode is in Voyager or in The Scottish Prisoner, sorry)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A clink of metal at the door made me look up from mopping the forehead of the desperately ill man.    


There were two men in the door, one tall, painfully thin, dressed in rags, and fettered.  The other was much shorter, slim, light-boned as a girl, and wearing the uniform of an English Army Officer.  This must be the prisoner brought to listen to the dying man’s final words.  Mr. Campbell, who owned The Lime Tree Inn, had mentioned they were coming.

I stood and curtsied to them.  It was only as I was rising that my mind finally made the connections.

Thin he was, and fettered, but he still stood as straight-backed as a king, the top of his head nearly brushing the rafters- chains and starvation could not mask that pride, for all they might try.  

His face was obscured by untrimmed and unwashed red beard, but it could not hide the slanting blue eyes that looked at me out of a bone-white face.  

It had been his hands though, that had given him away.  His right hand, specifically.  Where his left was large, straight, and capable-looking, his right was twisted, the middle finger crooked, the ring finger fused unnaturally straight.  Both had scars across the backs.  Scars that I knew intimately.  Scars I had created.

I schooled my features carefully before looking up at the two men, and cast my lot.  “ **Feasgar math maighstirean.** ”  I could only pray that the English officer did not know enough Gaelic to detect my own English accent beneath the unfamiliar words.

The officer gave a short, irritable bow, clearly understanding nothing of what I had just said, but the prisoner simply stood, looking as though he were made of stone.

“ **Thank you, we must speak with the wanderer now in private,** ” the Englishman said, gesturing me out the door with a polite, if perfunctory wave of his hand.

I cocked my head at him, as though I didn’t understand a word he’d said, and looked then at the prisoner.

At Jamie Fraser.

At my husband.

“ **You’ve learned some Gaelic then, have you Sorcha?** ” he asked quietly in that language, translating even my name for me.

I lowered my lashes and bobbed my head slightly.  “ **I’ve been practicing,** ” I answered.

“ **She doesna speak English,** ” Jamie lied to the officer.  “ **Would you like me to ask her if she will have some tea or food sent up?** ”

“ **No, just have her go.** ”

Jamie turned to me again.  “ **Are you really real?** ” he asked.

“ **I am. I promise I am.** ”

“ **What are you doing here?** ”

“ **I’m saving your life, fool.** ”  I could see the confusion and question in his eyes, but the small English officer was shifting from foot to foot, clearly desperate for me to leave.  I bobbed another curtsy and left, as he wanted.

My heart was hammering in my chest as I leaned against the wall outside the door.

I was terrified that the soldier might have been able to read my give-away countenance and see that I was lying.

I was thankful that the man seemed not to understand enough Gaelic to recognize my many mistakes, and that the recognizable feature of my madly-curling hair was tucked respectably away under a proper cap for once.

More than anything though, I was furious.

They were keeping that brilliant, strong, beautiful man of mine fettered.

I wanted to kill them.

~?~?~?~?~

Three days later, Jamie Fraser escaped from Ardsmuir Prison.

I had, of course, known he would.  It was why I’d come.

In 1957, (a year ago for me, and 202 years in the future for everyone else) I had told my husband, Frank that I wanted to begin medical school.  He, claiming to have been driven to the last straw by what he saw as my continued insistence on believing the fairy tale that I had concocted to explain my three years away, finally sought a divorce.  Able to prove that Brianna was not Frank Randall’s daughter, I had been awarded custody and had fled from Boston to the only place that I had ever found a home- Scotland.

Brianna, then nine years old, had been furious with me for never telling her. She’d loved Frank dearly, but his vitriol during the divorce had soured her feelings for him considerably.  Instead, I began to tell her about her real father- the 18th century highlander who had stolen my heart and given me my soul in the form of my daughter.

It had been Brianna’s idea to confirm his death, and her tenacity that had led to me finding him alive after Cullodden.

I had confirmed his death, however.  In the records of Ardsmuir there was a note:

_Prisoner James Mackenzie Fraser escaped three days past.  Caught on the moor, he was killed in his re-capture._

“ **We have to save him,** ” Brianna had said.

And so we had gone.  Flown through time together for the second time.  I had entrusted my daughter to Jenny and Ian with the promise that I would find a way to save Jamie.

What had gone unspoken but had been understood as I rode away from my daughter that day was that yes, I would save Jamie… or die trying.  Giving Brianna to them had not simply been a request for my family to care for her while I was away, but the implicit acknowledgment that I was giving her to them, perhaps for good.  They had accepted Jamie’s daughter without demur.

I’d spent the day that I knew he would escape carefully sifting through my herbs, preparing poultices and salves for his injuries, and packing my bags, knowing we would have to flee immediately.  Mostly I was trying to keep myself busy, ears trained to every sound outside of the miniscule croft where I lived.

For all I thought I had been listening carefully, he still startled me when he arrived.

Between one breath and another, he stood in my doorway (left open to encourage the light), his shadow falling over me long and alien.

“ **Sassenach** ,” he whispered.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Imagine if we had more of the Escape story... That would be lovely. It kind of ended on a cliffhanger... Pleaseandthanks.
> 
> Imagine if Claire went back to the 1940s, but instead of going back to Frank decided to stay in Scotland with her baby (staying in Inverness or buying a rundown Lallybroch). Flashfoward a couple of years later (less than 7), through Reverend Wakefield, Claire discovered that James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser’s innocence was proven by evidence provided by his wife, Claire Fraser.

****

_Between one breath and another, he stood in my doorway (left open to encourage the light), his shadow falling over me long and alien._

_“ **Sassenach,** ” he whispered._

“ **Jamie** ,” I breathed, looking at him.  Without thought, I launched myself at him, his arms going around me by instinct.

“ **Oh thank God you’re here.  You’re alive.** ”

He smelled unfamiliarly of filth hunger and fear, and yet his arms knew me and mine knew him, and when he kissed me, my body responded to him as it always had, lighting like dry kindling to his spark.

He murmured in Gaelic as he pushed me back into the cottage, kicking the door shut behind him, his mouth moving restlessly across my face, my neck, along the neckline of my gown.  Sometimes it was my name, sometimes “ **Sassenach** ,” and sometimes it was prayers.

As far as I could tell, he never looked up from me, and yet he pushed me inexorably toward my small bed in the corner of the cottage, his hands rucking up my skirt, continuing to breathe prayers and curses into my hair.

“ **Jamie** ,” I said, breathless.  “ **Jamie, wait-** “

“ **No** ,” he gasped.  “ **If I wait I’ll wake.** ”

With that, he pushed me onto the bed and followed me down, shoving my skirts out of the way as he went.

It wasn’t sweet and gentle.  It could scarcely even be called making love.  It was desperate and frightened and just the tiniest bit angry as he sheathed himself inside of me and plunged again and again and again.  It was nearly as desperate as the last time, on the eve of the end of the world.

It was over quickly; symptom of both desperation and deprivation, but Jamie did not move himself from atop me, just lay as though dead with his face buried in the side of my neck.

It took me several moments to realize that he was whispering something against my skin.

“ **What are you saying?** ” I asked.  I spoke barely above a whisper, afraid that the moment would shatter like glass if I raised my voice.

“ **I’m praying that I don’t wake,** ” he said, nearly as quietly, still with his face buried against my neck.

“ **You’re not asleep, Jamie,** ” I said, finally moving, but only enough to bring my hand up to his head, cupping the roundness of his skull as though he were an infant.  “ **I’m here.** ”

Jamie let out a heavy sigh and rolled to the side, disengaging our bodies and, for the first time I thought, really looked at me.

“ **You are here then?** ” he said, voice full of awe as he gently reached a hand up to touch my face.

“ **I am,** ” I said, smiling at him though there were tears rising up the back of my throat and blurring my vision.

“ **Why?** ” he asked, nearly weeping himself, the word sticking in his throat.

“ **Why?** ” I said back, frowning at him.

“ **Why come to Ardsmuir?  Why come back at all, Claire?** ”  Suddenly he jolted as though something had just occurred to him for the first time.  He scanned the cottage quickly, then his eyes were again on my face, fearful, and beginning to be angry.  “ **The child?  You didna leave him then, did you?** ”

“ **Leave him- No!** ” I cried, finally working out what he was saying.  “ **She’s at Lallybroch with Ian and Jenny.  They agreed to take care of her while I…** ” I trailed off as Jamie was obviously not listening.

“ **She?** ” he said, his jaw slack and his eyes wide.

I grinned.  “ **She.  Brianna Ellen Randall Fraser.  She’s ten years old, and she looks just like you.** ”

“ **Brianna?** ” he said, sounding slightly horrified.  “ **Why would you give her such a horrible name?** ”

“ **It’s not horrible!** ” I said, offended.  I pushed myself up and began brushing down my disordered skirts.  “ **It’s a perfectly lovely name, and besides, you told me to give it her.** ”

“ **I did?  When?** ”

“ **Before-** “ I began, then broke off, the memories of that day suddenly washing back, and the realization that we were together again after ten long years apart.  “ **The last time I saw you,** ” I said, more gently.  “ **You told me to name the child after your father.  His name was Brian, wasn’t it?** ”

“ **Aye** ,” he said, and for the first time I saw the barest hint of a smile on his face.  “ **Aye, I suppose I did, but that’s when I thought the baby would be a boy, wasn’t it?** ”

“ **Are you sorry she’s a girl then?** ” I was beginning to get irritated in spite of the situation.

“ **No!** ” he said, shocked.  “ **No** ,” he repeated more softly, taking my arm and drawing me back down against him.  “ **No** ,” he said, once more, into my hair.  “ **I am not sorry for anything, my Sassenach.** ”

We lay together in silence for a long, long moment.  There were things I knew must be done, but for that time, I was pleased to let him hold me close.

“ ** _Bri_ -enna,**” he said, suddenly, giving her name a lilt that emphasized the first syllable and nearly swallowed the second.  “T **hat’s the proper way to say it. Brienna.** ”

“ **Brienna** ,” I repeated softly into his shoulder.

“ **But why, Sassenach?  Why come back at all?  Why risk the stones with her?  And why here?  Why not stay at Lallybroch if you had to return?** ”

I pushed myself up to be able to look at him.  “ **Because I have to save your life, Jamie.  You’re going to die in three days.** ”

~?~?~?~?~

“ **I canna stay away from the prison, Claire,** ” Jamie said, simply.  He was now seated at the small table where I pounded herbs and met with the few patients that came to me from the village of Ardsmuir.

“ **If I stay away, the English army will tear down the village of Ardsmuir brick-by-brick, and if they dinna find me here, they will go next to Lallybroch.  I might allow it of Ardsmuir for you and for… for Brianna, but not Lallybroch.  Not my own folk.** ”

“ **But why would they come after you, Jamie?** ”  I was frustrated nearly to tears, and he remained as calm and steady as a rock.  “ **The rising has been over for years, the great traitors are dead, and Scotland lives under the king’s thumb.  They won’t rise to Charles again, not after the last time…** ”

“ **Nay, I dinna think it is fear of me returning to my traitor’s behaviour that would send them after me.  I think I wasna such a great hero as all that.  Nay, Sassenach, it’s the gold.** ”

I stared at him blankly.  “ **Gold?  What gold?** ”

“ **Louis’ gold.  You’ll mind at the end of things, there was always talk of gold coming from France, aye?** ”

I did mind that.  I had heard the rumours, as he had, though my own personal feelings toward Louis XV of France had made me rather disinclined to assume that he had enough honour and decency to send the promised gold.

“ **Duncan… the other night in the Inn, you recognized him?** ”  At my nod he continued.  “ **He’d come from the sea, of course, and was talking of gold.  The Sassenachs assumed he meant Louis’ gold, and if so, they want it.  That’s why they had me talk to him.  That’s why they struck off my irons finally.** ”

It was the first time I’d been conscious of the fact that he was not fettered.  I hadn’t noticed before, overwhelmed by the fact of his presence.

“ **They took them off so that you would…** ”

“ **So that I would speak to Duncan and tell them what he told me,** ” Jamie explained.

I picked up his hand and examined the scars around his wrists as he continued.

“ **I agreed to tell him everything, just as it was told to me, much good it’ll do him,** ” Jamie said, and his voice had turned bitter.

“ **Oh?** ”  I began to smear soothing cream over this wrists.

“ **He kent me, Duncan.  I dinna think he’d recognized you, your hair tucked away as it was, but he kent me, and I was able to get a warning to him that anything he said would be told to the Sassenachs.  I can’t be sure he wasna raving but… well… he kent me, and he mentioned my mother and…** ”

I looked up from my ministrations to find him looking at me with an odd expression.  “ **And?** ” I prompted.

“ **And a White Witch.  A ban-druidh.** ”

This second phrase caught my attention.  I’d heard it before, many times, but had never really known the translation for sure.  It was what the people at Lallybroch had called me when I’d lived there.

“ **So you dinna know anything about it,** ” he said, watching my face carefully.

I shook my head.  “ **Jamie… I had no secrets from you then.  If I’d have known, you would have as well.** ”

He said nothing, just continued to watch me.  He did not comment on the fact that I’d said I’d had no secrets then.  Ten years apart, and there were now secrets and mysteries between us as there had not been since first time we’d gone to Craig Na Dun together.

Finally, Jamie nodded and turned his eyes back to the table to continue his story.

“ **If it isna you, then I dinna know who it is, but Duncan did seem to think that there was gold and… well… I might have some idea of where it is.  Possibly.** ”

I continued to clean his wounds as he explained about the rocky coast of Scotland, the silkies’ isles, and Ellen’s tower.

“ **If we had the gold… turned it over to your Governor… would he allow you to vanish, do you suppose?** ”

Jamie shrugged in that odd way of his- as though the ragged shirt sat too tight across his shoulders.  “ **I canna tell.  He owes me a debt, does the Governor, though whether that debt is for good or for ill… no, Sassenach, I canna say.** ”

“ **A debt?** ” I asked.

For the first time, I saw a light of amusement cross his face.  “ **Oh aye.  Do you mind the eve of the battle at Preston, by chance?  And a lad who called himself William Grey who would have died for your honour?** ”

I blinked in shock.  Oh I recalled all right.  I recalled the small, fine-boned lad, the splotch of blood on Jamie’s throat, the broken arm, as well as the fear, the rage, and the shame of the night.

“ **Him?** ” I whispered.

“ **Aye, him.  And as I say, he owes me, but I dinna know whether he owes me for good or for ill.  I saved his life- or you did- that night, but I injured his pride, and young men tend to hold that in higher regard than their life often enough.** ”

Yes, I was well aware of that.  I’d known young men and their terrible, fragile pride for a very long time.

“ **I think it must be attempted, Jamie.  I won’t let you go back, not without a fight.** ”

~?~?~?~?~

Jamie Fraser crept slowly through the heather to appear at Lord John Grey’s side as he crouched behind a hillock, away from his men, relieving himself.

“ **I do beg your pardon for interrupting your private affairs,** ” he said in an ironically polite tone, “ **but I require a word, my Lord.** ”

Lord John jumped and Jamie clapped a hand over his mouth to keep him from crying out.

“ **Keep quiet you wee fool, or I’ll just disappear again, do you understand?** ”

Lord John nodded, his wide blue eyes on Jamie’s face in stunned disbelief.

Jamie removed his hand and Lord John started in again, this time in a harsh whisper.  “ **You… how… where… what?** ”

“ **I went to find your accursed gold.** ”

“ **My… you mean the French gold?** ”

“ **Nay, there’s no French gold.  Louis never sent anything to Charles.  This gold is something else entirely.  I dinna know where it comes from, but you can have it and damned to you, but I’d have something of you in return.** ”

“ **You have it?** ” John said, his voice rising above a whisper in his shock, but still not loud enough to be heard over the sough of the wind across the moor the hundred feet away where his men waited.

“ **Aye, I said so.** ”

John looked the other man over.  Fraser was still in his prison rags, and there was no place for gold to be hidden in those tatters and patches.  He looked up and met the big Scot’s eye with an ironically raised eyebrow.

“ **I dinna have it on my person at precisely this moment, my wife has it for, if you dinna do as I ask, she will take it to the ocean and throw it into the sea and you’ll nay have it again.** ”

John could see no lie in the face of the other man.

“ **And what is it you’d have of me?** ” he asked.

“ **My death.** ”

John blinked stupidly at the other man for a long moment.

“ **You want what?** ”

“ **I want you to kill me here on the moor.  I want you to go back to the prison with your men, and I want you to write that fact in your wee book.  I want all of history to know that James Mackenzie Fraser died on this day.** ”

John shook his head.  “ **You want me to kill you and then what?  Your wife will appear from the mist and pay me a king’s ransom in faerie gold?** ”

“ **No, not faerie.  Greek**.”

“ **Greek?** ”

“ **Roman too, I believe.** ”  

Jamie turned his left hand over and opened it where John could see.  There, in the middle, sat a small gold coin, obviously ancient.

“ **Dear God in heaven,** ” John breathed, leaning forward to look at the coin.  “ **That’s not the Frenchman’s gold.** ”

“ **Nay.  But treasure it is, of a sort.** ”

John’s eyes sharpened on the older man.  “ **You’d best explain yourself, Mr. Fraser,** ” he said, and with a glance over his shoulder added, “ **and quickly too.** ”

~?~?~?~?~

The shot rang out over the moor, and the soldiers hurried to it, finding their commander standing over the body of the man that the prisoners called Mac Dubh.

“ **What happened?** ” one young lad asked, staring at the blood that stained the back of the man’s shirt.

“ **He came upon me as I was… attending my business,** ” Lord John said in his sharp, cultured accents, “ **and he attempted to run.  I could not chase him down, so I… well…** ”

“ **I see, my Lord.  Quite right,** ” another officer said, nodding at still form on the ground.

“ **Is he…** ” one officer began, sounding squeamish.

“ **He is,** ” John snapped.

“ **And…** ” that same young man began again, “ **will we need to take him back to the… the prison to bury him, sir?** ”

John hesitated for a moment, looking down at the big, still frame, then up at the lowering sky.

“ **I think he would slow us down too much.  Leave him for the corbies.  He deserves that much.** ”

No one present could decide if Lord John meant that the man deserved to lay in free ground and under open sky for the rest of time, or if he deserved no proper burial.

“ **Come along then, there’s nothing more for us here,** ” John said, sounding weary.

The soldiers began to troop back to their horses, but one lieutenant stayed behind, walking beside the commander.

“ **Sir… er… my Lord.  Did he have… I mean… the reason he escaped.  You said… gold?** ”

John nodded.  “ **Yes, he had gold.  Not French gold, but something worth sending back home, I’d say.** ”

The lieutenant nodded and joined his fellows as they reached the horses.

John glanced back to where the body of James Mackenzie Fraser lay in the damp of the moor.  He might have seen a swirl of brown, curly hair over the top of the hillock, but it was probably his imagination.

~?~?~?~?~

I listened until I could no longer hear the sound of the soldiers horses and the birds began to trill again before I crawled from the hiding place where Jamie had installed me.

He was there, on the ground, blood staining the back of his ragged shirt.  Nothing about him moved, save for his hair where it was picked up by the wind and danced about his head.  No muscle twitched.  He did not breath.

I knelt at his side and began, slowly, to walk my fingers up his side until I reached a spot that I remembered (ten years apart, and I still remembered this) was ticklish.  I, quite deliberately, poked him there.

Jamie grunted and, quick as lightning, grabbed my wrist and rolled to his back, pulling me atop him.  He then buried his hands in my curly hair and pulled my mouth to his for a long, breathless kiss.  He still tasted of the sea, and of the moor, and of watercress, and the grease from the rabbits that we had eaten the previous night.

Finally, after a very long time, I pulled away from him and smiled down into his blue eyes.

“ **Come on, Jamie.  Let’s go home to Lallybroch.** ”

~?~?~?~?~

That night, cuddled together around the campfire, I opened the pocket that I wore at my waist and poured the colourful fire into his hands.  Emerald, ruby, sapphire, topaz, something crystalline and black, other gems to which I could not put a name.  They were dazzling.  They were hope.


End file.
